There's gold in them thar Tundras

CrackedCrystal

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I just wanted to share a favorite strategy of mine. I never saw it posted before Everyone knows that tundra at the north and south is useless right? WRONG

first found the city in the tundra and set its production to wealth, and set their lone citizen to a taxman. Since the city square will produce one gpt, wealth will produce 1gpt, and the taxman 2gpt (in C3C), that "useless city" is now making you 4gpt.

now, I will plaster the tundra with an ICS of size 1 cities. Just look at the picture, my useless tundra is now earning me 88gpt!!!! plus it adds an equivalent amount of support for units based on your government (a whopping 132 in communism if you use that)

I'll even usually only have about 5 fast units protecting the entire lot of them during wartime. The AI tends to not go for them unless they are close.

Never again is Tundra useless. Plus, you can turn one of those taxmen into a scientist to research at slowest rate!
 

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This is a similar concept to a fishing village, where you take a city with little production and use it to earn gold. In fact, the towns on the coast in your image should be developed into fishing villages rather than staying at size 1.

I usually place my cities much closer in tundra than I would elsewhere, but I have never placed them that close together. I think I will try this from now on. :goodjob:
 
Hmm, I once did think something along these lines (but not as far as you did, really quite interesting!) IIRC, though, my only concern is corruption; there's an equation (I think it's posted somewhere in one of the War Academy articles) that shows that the number of cities under your control is directly proportional to the general corruption of your civ. You might try as an experiment to see how much corruption there is in your core cities (count all the red commerce and shields) w/ all of these cities, save your game, then disband all of your tundra cities and see if the corruption in your core cities is lowered. Just a thought.
 
You mean something like the south part of this?

 
Zakharov said:
This is a similar concept to a fishing village, where you take a city with little production and use it to earn gold. In fact, the towns on the coast in your image should be developed into fishing villages rather than staying at size 1.
I use those as well closer to the capitol, the problem is if the tundra is far off, and the corruption is high. This way, no matter were in the world you put the cities, corruption is not a problem.
 
elpadrino87 said:
though, my only concern is corruption; there's an equation (I think it's posted somewhere in one of the War Academy articles) that shows that the number of cities under your control is directly proportional to the general corruption of your civ.
As long as these are placed well outside a decent rank, they will not affect your core. I believe only cities closer to the capitol than the city in question will effect its corruption. Unless you are in communism.
 
interesting concept.

ive pretty much come to the conclusion that under republic and democracy there is little if any point in building improvements like marketplaces in fully corrupt cities (1.29f version). so lets take this strategy one step further and do an ics in the entire corrupt area. now i can have maybe 200-400 such cities depending on map size and get a free 800-1600 gold. you didnt point that each tundra city also produces at least one food surplus. you convert the extra food to two gold by making a tax collector but in a grassy spot you can get four food instead of the two gold and grow the city quickly up to the point of supporting maybe three or so tax collectors. i can imagine a game with 4000 gold per turn.its a shame its such a pain to manage. its also a shame that under 1.29f i dont get unit support under republic from these cities. all the same i think i will try this in my next game. if nothing else i should be able to milk a pretty high score from doing this.
 
rysingsun said:
so lets take this strategy one step further and do an ics in the entire corrupt area
I have actually though about this. And I agreed in Vanilla and PTW, but C3C changes things. Specifically it changes corruption. Now, totally corrupt cities can become marginally effective. The general rule is 90% corruption - 10% for each reduction factor. So now a far flung colony with a courthouse and police station in WLTKD is only 60% corrorupt. While that is not a powerhouse, it is enough to builld a modest amount of units. Thus you should not limit the city size if possible.

The reason this strategy holds only in tundra is the lack of food to grow beyond 2 (not counting coastal cities). You cannot irrigate tundra, so it will always only produce 1 food even with a forest. So, lets assume a 60% corruption in the tundra and look at production. 1 for the city tile, and 2 x 2spt for forrest/mined tundra on your two citizens totalling 5 shields. with 60% corruption, that is only 3 usable shields max, not very impressive.


However, a size twelve city could easily produce 15 spt with the same conditions (25 pre-corruption). Enough to build a tank in 7 turns. definately useful for a foward attack line.
 
The problem with this ICS strategy is that you still need to build settlers to colonize all that toundra. If you have surplus production, no problem; but then, you don't need all these mini-cities. And if you don't have surplus production, your shields are probably better used to add banks, univs etc. in core cities. Or just troops to kick the AI's b***.
 
I prefer to build fishing villiages, if they have enough water, fish and whales they can sometimes reach a population of 12-13; after all the water is being fished the last two citizens can work hills or forests producing a modest 5-7 shields a turn (counting the shield from the city center tile). That plus a shield from a whale can produce a modest productivity; not enough for a wonder, but good enough for some units and most improvements before the modern times.
 
As long as those tundra cities are farther from your palace than your useful cities, they shouldn't have any bad effect on corruption. I think the main drawback of this strategy is that it costs 30 shields and 20 food (assuming a granary) to build the settler for each city. A return of 4gpt takes a while to pay off that investment. In many cases, a military unit or city improvement would be a better investment. But the tundra cities could be useful if you're going for an early spaceship or something where money is extremely important.
 
corruption, are only new citys effected by the numberof citys u have over the optimum?, or each on u add means all citys get slightly worce?
 
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